Malachi’s Mummy

It’s the holidays, which means two things:

1. Public transport is full of kids and their weary parents.
2. People in public transport are even more irritable than usual.

I was on the tube during rush hour when a family of four got on—two parents, a pram, and a walking child, who looked no more than three or four. Understandably, the little one was restless, making noise. Not screaming, not causing chaos, just being a child.

Now, if you’ve ever travelled on the London Underground, you’ll know that there’s an unspoken rule: silence is golden. If you so much as breathe too loudly, you risk being excommunicated from the entire transport network. To be balanced, people who listen to music videos without headphones or have conversations on loudspeaker should absolutely be excommunicated 😂.

Predictably, the sighs started. The sharp glances, the dramatic shifting in seats. A man who looked like he was about to combust muttered under his breath, “Control your children.”

Now, to be clear, these parents were controlling their children. The dad was throwing out jokes about feeding them to the T-ex at the museum they just visited if they didn’t listen. They were shushing, distracting, and doing all the things parents do to keep public spaces as pleasant as possible for others. But it wasn’t enough.

And this got me thinking—about entitlement. About how intolerant we’ve become of the slightest inconvenience. Because really, that’s all this was. A minor, 10-minute inconvenience. Was it really worth the sighs, the eye-rolls, the whispered complaints? Absolutely not.

The Other Side of the Coin

Later that day, I saw a different kind of entitlement play out.

A pregnant woman got on a packed train. Before anyone had a chance to register her presence, she loudly announced, “You need to get up. I’m pregnant and these seats are reserved for people like me.”.

Was she wrong? No, I would argue that given her current condition she was entitled to that seat. But the delivery? It rubbed people the wrong way. The young man sitting there got up—slowly, deliberately, with a look that said, Was that really necessary? Maybe she’d been ignored before. Maybe she’d had to fight for a seat one too many times. I get it. I’ve been there myself—pregnant, exhausted and just wanting to sit down. Personally, I’ve never felt awkward about asking, I’m a big believer in using your words, people, especially strangers aren’t mind readers and aren’t paying you any attention as they’re submerged in their phones most of the time. Ask, be firm, but don’t be rude. 

The Bigger Picture

These two situations sat with me for the rest of my journey—one that, thanks to a 90-minute delay, meant I probably wouldn’t see my boy before bedtime (At least I got some blog inspiration out of it).

And I kept coming back to this: We live in a culture that hates being inconvenienced. We expect everything to be tailored to our comfort, and when it’s not, we react—sometimes with passive-aggressive sighs, sometimes with sharp demands, often without grace. 

Children, especially, seem to bear the brunt of this. They’re seen as disruptive, as nuisances, rather than as… well, people. Little humans figuring out the world. But public spaces are just that—public. They’re not curated for silence, for ease, for personal preference. They’re for everyone. Hear me well, if my child is doing the most and crossing the line, it’s my job to teach him to be respectful of others in public spaces. But I’m also aware I’ll need patience, perseverance and thick skin from the staring onlookers as I do it and he hopefully learns. 

So maybe, just maybe, we need to reframe our approach. Instead of reacting with frustration, we could respond with a little more grace. Because in the grand scheme of things, is a noisy child on a train really that big of a deal?